Concerning Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov’s Article for the Journal Foreign Affairs
1167-19-07-2007
An article of Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov was offered to the editors of Foreign Affairs in May for publication. The Russian minister had wanted to directly address the audience of this prestigious magazine to explain Russian foreign policy and our vision of contemporary international relations and of ways to ensure a positive direction in the evolution of bilateral Russian-American relations, including interaction in international affairs.
Another motive for this offer was the discussion started in the journal’s pages on the theme of “containing Russia” by the publication of an article signed by Yulia Tymoshenko.
Editors at the magazine, citing their own requirements, subjected the article to heavy editing if not to say censorship. The article was cut by 40%, losing a considerable part of its original meaning. Some of the editors’ corrections suggested that Sergey Lavrov subscribe, no more no less, to the certain foreign policy approaches of the current US administration that evoke our principled rejection. Having gone through all this and guided solely by the interests of strengthening Russian-American relations, we encountered a situation where the magazine’s editors put forward an utterly farfetched and unacceptable demand for us. They insisted on adding to the article’s title “Containing Russia: Back to the Future?” a subtitle: “Averting a new cold war” or “a conflict between Russia and America.”
As a matter of fact, such a subtitle fundamentally runs counter to the key idea of the Russian minister’s article, since Moscow presumes that there can be no talk of a new cold war and especially a conflict between our countries whatsoever. There are no objective grounds for this. The danger of Russian-American relations evolving according to a negative scenario lies elsewhere, notably in the separate existence of the Russian and American factors in global politics, which hardly meets the interests of our two countries and the international community as a whole. Whereas some attempt to intimidate Russia by alleging that the sole alternative to a “unipolar world” is chaos or a return to the cold war. By the way, it was about the danger of “estrangement” between Russia and the US that Henry Kissinger wrote back in March.
The editors’ flat refusal to remove the sub-headline about a new cold war was the last straw, for they had submitted no intelligible explanations for their attempts to impose this sub-headline, ignoring the author’s opinion.
As a result of the excruciating and sluggish exchanges with the editors, the likes of which could only be found in diplomatic history, it was deemed advisable to give up trying to place Sergey Lavrov’s article in Foreign Affairs. This experience caused us to remember the worst features of the Soviet censorship past, which some in America seem to be trying to repeat.
It’s a pity that the editors of the journal voluntarily or involuntarily played into the hands of those who want to prevent open, free and well-argued debates on international affairs and US foreign policy. Such closedness hardly meets the national interests of America, as all of its allies and friends, among whom Russia regards itself, understand them. This approach is fundamentally opposed to the openness that characterizes the relationship between Presidents Vladimir Putin and George Bush.
It should be noted that Foreign Affairs’ partner the Russian journal Russia in Global Politics carried a full translation of the above-mentioned article signed by Yulia Tymoshenko, even though it is a quite meticulous inventory of the entire range of complaints about the new Russia and its foreign policy, dictated by traditional anti-Russian prejudices and stereotypes. This magazine also had room for such former members of the present administration as Thomas Graham, Richard Haas and Ronald Asmus, whose articles, like the article signed by Tymoshenko, did not have to go through censorship.
It’s a great pity that a protective tendency makes itself felt in a part of the American media that narrows America’s intellectual resource. We are convinced that the United States deserves better.
To show the Russian and American publics that there is nothing in the article of Sergey Lavrov that would be harmful for adult Americans to read, below is published its “sanitized” text in the English language, on which we failed to come to an agreement with the Foreign Affairs editors because of their refusal to remove the sub-headline they themselves had thought up. The original, “pre-censorship” text of the article will come out in the July-August issue of the journal Russia in Global Politics.
The Article by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov “Containing Russia: Back to the Future?”
